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Blogging has its place in a lot of startups but is hard to justify for ours. We're selling a purely commercial product to technologically unsavvy clients who ex

Blogging has its place in a lot of startups but is hard to justify for ours. We're selling a purely commercial product to technologically unsavvy clients who expect a professional public face. It's a triple whammy. Very few of them follow blogs (you're lucky if they own a smartphone) and any posts come off either as tacky schilling or unprofessional commentary. That being said, we still blog for the purpose of content and keywords for SERPs.

robfitz 15y ago
Hey JS, I think you've got two fallacies baked into your perspective. First, that blogs have to be unprofessional. That's simply not true -- for more "serious" industries, you can treat the content like mini-whitepapers or slices of a conference presentation. Second, that non-technical people can't appreciate and share good content. They can, although it goes through email rather than rss. If you provide the mini-report and analysis which helps someone win an intra-management dispute, you're going to have an evangelist forever. The less your industry does it already, the more value I see in you breaking the mould. Which supplier are you going to pick up the phone and call? The one you've heard very highly of, or the one whose report you just spent the morning poring over?
- JS_startup 15y ago
  Good points Rob, and I can see what you mean about breaking the mold in an industry where blogging isn't common. My comment on the blog posts appearing unprofessional just meant that I can't take a casual, conversational approach to blogging which makes posts a lot easier and more fun to write. Everything has to be written from that anonymous company-as-a-person perspective so the resultant posts are dry and difficult to write. I like your idea about providing thorough technical content though, I'm going to keep it in mind the next time I write one.

robfitz 15y ago

Hey JS, I think you've got two fallacies baked into your perspective. First, that blogs have to be unprofessional. That's simply not true -- for more "serious" industries, you can treat the content like mini-whitepapers or slices of a conference presentation. Second, that non-technical people can't appreciate and share good content. They can, although it goes through email rather than rss. If you provide the mini-report and analysis which helps someone win an intra-management dispute, you're going to have an evangelist forever. The less your industry does it already, the more value I see in you breaking the mould. Which supplier are you going to pick up the phone and call? The one you've heard very highly of, or the one whose report you just spent the morning poring over?

JS_startup 15y ago
Good points Rob, and I can see what you mean about breaking the mold in an industry where blogging isn't common. My comment on the blog posts appearing unprofessional just meant that I can't take a casual, conversational approach to blogging which makes posts a lot easier and more fun to write. Everything has to be written from that anonymous company-as-a-person perspective so the resultant posts are dry and difficult to write. I like your idea about providing thorough technical content though, I'm going to keep it in mind the next time I write one.